<\/p>\n
Disney<\/a> is reportedly shuttering its metaverse business as part of a larger round of layoffs.<\/p>\n The entertainment behemoth has shut down its division that was working on metaverse strategies as part of a plan that could shrink Disney\u2019s headcount by about 7,000, The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> Tuesday (March 28).<\/p>\n The 50-person division, overseen by former Disney consumer products executive Mike White, was responsible for coming up with ways to tell interactive stories across new formats, but using Disney\u2019s deep bench of intellectual properties, the report said, citing unnamed sources.<\/p>\n As reported here last month, Disney is embarking on a massive restructuring<\/a>, one that involves \u2014 as CEO Bob Iger<\/a> said \u2014 a push to \u201creturn creativity to the center of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Iger also made it clear that Disney\u2019s chief focus was restoring profitability, a goal that will require $5.5 billion in cost cutting.<\/p>\n Disney first revealed its metaverse ambitions<\/a> last year, with former CEO Bob Chapek saying he was \u201cblown away\u201d by company teams\u2019 experiments with the metaverse and virtual reality, which he described as \u201cthe next great storytelling frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n Also excited by the metaverse is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who expects a billion people to live in the virtual space by 2030.<\/p>\n As PYMNTS\u2019 Karen Webster wrote<\/a> earlier this week, Meta has reportedly lost six times more money than it made from the metaverse as it tried to entice users. And despite a shrinking market cap, Zuckerberg remains undaunted, saying his company will invest 20% of its revenues in the metaverse each year going forward.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s only one problem,\u201d wrote Webster. \u201cMost people \u2014 as in mostly all of them \u2014 don\u2019t want to give up the physical world to live mainly via avatars in a virtual one,\u201d even if they want to use technology to improve their interactions in the physical world.<\/p>\n In a separate interview<\/a> with PYMNTS this week, Worldline<\/a> metaverse head\u00a0Sascha M\u00fcnger<\/a> \u2014 whose company is soon to open a virtual shopping mall \u2014 said that for the metaverse to truly take off, technological development would need to speed up.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you buy a hoodie for your virtual avatar, you want to use it in different worlds and not just in one world,\u201d M\u00fcnger said. \u201cAnd this is where NFT technology based on blockchain can help because as the owner, you could connect your wallets to all those different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Disney is reportedly shuttering its metaverse business as part of a larger round of layoffs. The entertainment behemoth has shut down its division that was working on metaverse strategies as part of a plan that could shrink Disney\u2019s headcount by about 7,000, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (March 28). The 50-person division, overseen by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[263,262,260,259,258,265,202,261,264],"class_list":["post-250925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metaverse","tag-axie-infinity","tag-axs","tag-decentraland","tag-facebook","tag-game","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-nft","tag-sandbox","tag-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250925"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250936,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250925\/revisions\/250936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}